Android 2.2 — Official Droid 2.2 Update — Overview — With Flash

Android 2.2 for Droid Phones is called FroYo — short for Frozen Yogurt.

This video will help you know what happened if you just received your Droid 2.2 or Android 2.2 operating system on your Droid Phone, or it can be a handy overview to help you get around on your Phone running the Android Operating system.

This video will attempt to cover the more visible changes and will not get into the very nerdy stuff about any increased capacity or speed of the phone.

I’ll be showing you what Android 2.2 looks like on the original Motorola Droid Phone, so your phone might look or act a bit differently.

So, let’s go…

Application Launcher
Down on the bottom of your home screen you will see a new launcher area. It includes 3 items, A Phone Dialer icon, The App Launcher (that’s the icon with a bunch of little squares), and a Web Browser icon.

Here’s a quick overview on how the app launcher works…
Press the squares in the middle of the launcher area on the bottom and up pops the apps that are installed on your phone… just to help you get around, they’re alphabetized. Scroll up or down to see more of them. Press the Home Icon on the bottom to return to your home screen.

Home Screens
You now have 5 home screens — that’s right 5. You can get from screen to screen many different ways. Press on the little dots on the bottom, just to the side of the launcher area, and it moves you one screen at a time in that direction.

When I’m all the way to the left-most screen you can see that there are 4 dots on the right now. I can get to those screens by pressing those dots. If I do 3 quick presses on those dots, I’ll move over three screens quickly.

If I long-press on any of the dots or in the middle launcher area, up pops a mini-display of all 5 home screens. Press on a screen image and you are there instantly.

Recent Apps screen
When you long press on your Home key (that’s on the very bottom), you see a pop-up screen that shows you the apps or widgets you have been recently using called the «Recent» screen.

In the past, it only showed 6 items, now it shows the last 8. Press on an app or widget displayed here to quickly jump from one to the other. No need to return to the home screen and hunt for an app or widget, just long press the home key and jump to the next one right here. Multi-tasking at its best!

Google Search Changes
The Google Search Widget now lets you decide where you want your search to happen. Press on the Google «G» and you can search ALL locations, search on the Web, search through Apps that are on your phone — or hit the right arrow up top to go to the market, and search through all the contacts on your phone the normal way — or press this arrow up top here and see your contacts on your phone in a different way.

Android Market
The big change for non phone-geeks in the Market is the fact that you can tell your apps to Automatically Update. That way they don’t keep telling you that there is an update, please go get it — it just updates for you, automatically.

In the past you had an update notification show up in the top notification bar,
you chose it and then you could see the apps that needed updating — you had to do this update thing one app at a time.

Now you can choose «Update All» or better yet, select an individual app, and then select «Allow Automatic Updating» up top. The last step is to press «update» on the bottom and it will bug you no more! That app will just automatically update when it needs to.

Camera App changes
A few things have changed with the camera, but we’ll focus on the camera’s options or settings… they are now shown as unobtrusive overlay icons on the bottom or the right side.

Your old camera options are all there in fact there are even some new ones… Here’s a Big Camera Tip though, when you press the right-most or top-most camera setting icon, don’t forget to scroll down inside of it to see all the hidden options.

Here’s an extra camera bonus. When you’re in video mode, you can now turn on your flash and use it like a spot light for low light situations — battery drain here we come! By the way we have some handy tutorial videos we made to help you regain some battery life, so go ahead and watch ’em. We made ’em for you!

Gmail Interface Changes
When you read an email in gmail, you can easily jump to the next or previous email using the nifty new buttons on the bottom, or select «Archive» or «Delete» for the message you are currently reading without having to go to your menu options first. Nice time saver if you have lots of emails.

Call Log improvements
When you call or get calls on your phone and then you look at your call log, you can now see more of the calls on the list because calls from a single number, that happen on a single day, are grouped together taking up less space overall. You can expand or contract the listing of those numbers by pressing the icon on the left side.

Each of our videos normally has a UseMyDroid Power Tip, but because there is so much to cover, we’re just going to go faster now…

Gallery App Changes
Check out the items in albums mode, then do a zoom motion… pretty cool

The Car / Home App has changed
This app looks very different now, expect more in the future, and by the way, you have to use the Exit button to get out of it.

Application Settings and SD cards
Apps that are aware, can be run off the SD card now. Go to:
Settings… Applications… Manage Applications… Select an app, move app to SD card or move app back to phone.

Tethering with USB & WiFi
Using your phone as a Connection to the Internet for your computer using a USB cable or a Wireless connection is called Tethering. Depending on the phone and your network plan, you’ll have different options. Go to
Settings… Wireless & networks… Choose Tethering

Screen Lock options
Lots of Screen Lock Choices now. Go to:
Settings… Location & Security… Set up Screen Lock, now you’ve got lots of options that can make it harder to get into your phone.

Adobe Flash
Flash software allows your phone to run Flash Enabled Websites, Games and Videos. It’s a big deal for the mobile phone world to be able to use flash — Droid now can use it!

Flash can now go on your phone… Depending on your model, of course. At this time to get Flash on your phone you have to perform two system updates. You have to upload the first Froyo 2.2 update, then you have to allow a second update to get on your phone which allows your phone to get ready to receive Flash.

I expect that in the future, these two updates will be combined into one Android System Update. Here is the info panel for the second update which gets your Droid phone ready for installing Adobe Flash.

Once you’ve allowed the second system update, your «About Phone» info will look something like this.

Now you’re ready to go to the Market and download Adobe Flash the software… search for «Adobe Flash» or «Flash 10».

Here’s a special note… If you don’t see Adobe Flash in the Market, then your Droid Phone is not ready to get flash yet — it should be soon.

Select Flash, Choose it, and Install it.

Once it’s installed, which seems to take a while, I suggest that you select «Automatic Updating» to keep current with any updates for Adobe Flash.

After it is installed, you can verify that Flash is on your phone at least two different ways:

Go to Settings
Choose Applications
Choose Manage Applications
And you should see Adobe Flash in the list of downloaded Apps.

Another way to verify that Flash is installed properly on your phone is to go to a website that needs to use flash like Hulu.com.

See this area up top? If you don’t have Flash installed, it’s not going to work right.

Wow, we have covered a lot!

For many of the items overviewed in this video, we have made short tip articles or full-blown tutorials on our website.

Since this video was intended as just an overview, there’s bound to be stuff I did not go over or go into enough detail for some of you… so, why don’t you add a comment telling all of us what it was that was added to your phone that you like best or what would you like a more in-depth tutorial on and we’ll take it from there… Thanks for watching, enjoy your Droid phone!

For more helpful tips tricks and video tutorials on how to get the most out of your Droid phone, visit our website at UseMyDroid.com or search online for «UseMyDroid».

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